The SU athletics staff organized photos and posed players for the annual team poster. As the players mingled between photo shoots, they had free time to talk. Here are a few strictly surface impressions:

-Rakeem Christmas is currently sporting a fauxhawk and a neatly trimmed beard. Christmas said he wasn’t sure whether the look would last. Both he and Trevor Cooney lamented how long it takes for them to grow beards. Cooney rubbed his hand over his patchy chin stubble and said the look took a week to grow. Christmas is also bigger through his deltoids and his biceps, two areas he said he worked to improve over the summer.

-Baye Keita spent a month this summer in Colorado, where his host family lives. Keita said he’d gained some weight during the offseason, but lost all of it when his wisdom teeth were removed and he could not chew. Now that he’s back in Syracuse, he said, he’s hoping to add bulk to what is still a fairly reedy frame.

-We’ve already reported that Jerami Grant is 6-foot-8, instead of the inflated sizes linked to him over the summer. Grant’s Twitter handle is MooMoo25. When asked about it, he said that’s long been his nickname.